Stuck on You
by Talitha Koum
Summary: Sheldon and Penny are stuck with each other. Literally.
1. Chapter 1

Title: Stuck on You  
Author: Talitha Koum  
Spoilers: Recent episodes.  
Rating: PG-13 for mild language.  
Word Count: 3700+  
Disclaimer: I do not own The Big Bang Theory. Insert witticism here.

A/N: _A SILLY FIC TO LIGHTEN THE MOOD! I started writing this in early March so it's early March in the fic. :p I had planned on posting Stuck on You as a one-shot, but it turned out way too long. Without further ado, enjoy!_

ooo

Sheldon Cooper was bored.

It was Sunday. Dr. Gablehauser forbade him to work on the weekends, spewing nonsense about labor laws when Sheldon knew very well labor laws had absolutely nothing to do with it. California law required that employers pay overtime, whether the overtime is authorized or not, at the rate of one and one-half times the employee's regular rate of pay for all hours worked in excess of eight up to and including twelve hours in any workday.

If Sheldon had his way, he would work whenever boredom reared its ugly head. It didn't happen often, but when it did it wasn't pretty. He watched crazy things when he was bored like The Hannah Montana Movie. (Never again.) The university, however, countered his wishes, explaining to him that 'money didn't grow on trees' like he was a child that failed to grasp the grown-up world and its monetary tribulations.

Sheldon was forced to suck it up.

Literally, forced.

If Dr. Gablehauser caught him at CalTech after hours one more time? Sheldon shuddered at the consequences. Heaven help the day he stooped to shop with Penny out of sheer desperation.

Though, shopping with Penny was starting to sound pretty diverting at this point in time...

_No. A million times, no! _

Sheldon cleaned the apartment. Twice. He spent all of Saturday up to his elbows in rubber gloves and disinfectant, watching--or listening, rather--to _The Fellowship of the Ring_, _The Two Towers_, and _The Return of the King_ while he busied himself with what he called Spring Cleaning even though, technically, March 20th at midnight would be the first day of spring in the Northern Hemisphere. But whatever. He quoted the movies word for word while he worked, thinking: _I don't miss Leonard. I don't miss Leonard._

He missed Leonard.

So Penny and Leonard had a nasty break up, he thought. So things were said. So things were thrown. Sheldon didn't understand how these factors constituted a sabbatical to Las Vegas with Koothrapali and Wolowitz. While matters of the heart were duly noted in his friendship agreement, Leonard didn't want his sympathy, which equaled X amount of coitus divided by Y amount of months as a couple in Sheldon's mind. (I.e., a lot of sympathy.) Leonard reminded him he wasn't particularly good at sympathy, but: _"If you're concerned with reciprocity, you can subtract the time I'm on vacation from the equation." _

Sheldon agreed.

Now he was left alone. And bored.

He hadn't been bored in a while. His mind was always churning away, solving problems, but he couldn't concentrate today of all days. His brain was being completely unreliable and downright stubborn. It kept buzzing in his ears--that not-so-familiar sensation Sheldon equated with having forgotten something--pinching at his theories like his Aunt Edna would pinch his cheeks. Sheldon refused to admit he forgot until he was driven from his own brilliance with a stomp of his foot.

He needed something to do with his hands. Something menial.

Sheldon rummaged around in Leonard's closet, pointedly ignoring the Bottle City of Kandor he lost in an ill-wagered Halo match, and retrieved the chemicals he knew Leonard had liberated from the university. He set up a pseudo lab in the kitchen; goggles, gloves, beakers, the works. Since he had spent the better part of the last six months warning Leonard that his relationship with Penny would never hold, he dabbled in the science of adhesives, thinking himself genuinely funny.

His mind cranked out information like a well-oiled machine. Solvent evaporation. Polyvinylacetate latex. Flexible bonds. Anionic polymerization. Cyanoacrylate. C5H5NO2--_still with the pinching!_

Sheldon's eye twitched. He, of course, knew he was prone to forgetfulness. After being told over and over again what a robot he was, a part of himself came to expect his robotic attributes to override his human limitations. So there he stood, playing chemist, half of himself fawning over his witticism and half of himself embarrassed he found this at all amusing. He mixed his concoction, acutely aware his mind had entered the theta state.

Sheldon made a face at the muddy mess he created by accident. Or not by accident. There was no telling. He picked up the beaker with his left hand in case something should happen. He sniffed conservatively, intrigued that there wasn't an odor of which to speak. The borosilicate glass was cool to the touch, not hot. He transferred a little of the brown liquid into a Petri dish for later observation. Sheldon held the beaker at eye-level and swirled the mixture around and around and around--

_BOOM!_

Sheldon jumped.

Penny shuffled through the living room. Her eyes were closed and she yawned a jaw-cracking yawn. "Coffee. Need coffee."

"Penny..." Sheldon blinked. He pulled the goggles off his face. He noticed now that the pinching sensation was gone, but a new feeling took its place. He pinned it down to either guilt or gas and since he had moved his bowels successively that morning, guilt it was. "...I forgot about you."

Penny opened the cabinet. She stood on her tip-toes, her impossibly short pajama bottoms ridding up her backside.

Sheldon looked at the ceiling. "It seems that while I thought to console Leonard, I failed to console you." He glanced at Penny to see if she was standing flat-footed. (She wasn't.) Sheldon looked at the floor. "Are you in need of consolation?"

Penny grunted.

"I'll take that as a no."

Glance. Still on her tip-toes.

"Oh, good Lord." Sheldon stood behind Penny, reached over her head, and pulled down the can of coffee and her mug of preference.

"Shank'oo."

"You're welcome," Sheldon made a point to enunciate.

Penny turned around, drunkenly recoiled at the sight of Sheldon standing so close, patted his chest with a smile, and leaned against the island where Sheldon's beakers and chemicals and goggles were organized by size. "Wha'cha doin'?" Penny asked, scooping coffee beans directly onto the counter.

Sheldon snatched her mug out of her hands and prepared her coffee like a civilized person. "This," he said, showing her the beaker he held while he fiddled with the settings on Leonard's Mr. Coffee.

"Mud?"

"Glue." Sheldon laughed at the thought of referring to Penny and Leonard's breakup as a sticky situation, but he knew better than to antagonize his neighbor so early in the morning.

"You plan on gluing your hands together?"

"Pardon?"

Penny pointed, squinting. The bun on the top of her head flip-flopped. "You've got glue on your hand."

It was true. The majority of the beaker had spilt--probably when Penny startled him--and now his glove was ruined. Sheldon pursed his lips. "This is what happens when you don't knock." He set the beaker down on the island in its retort stand, clasping it securely in its proper place. It was then he noticed the glue stains were gone. All that was left were singed holes.

_Jesus. _

"I think I've burned myself."

"Let me see."

"NO!" Sheldon raised his hand high into the air. He warned Penny about the risk of infection, but she didn't heed his words. She never heeded his words. She merely poked him in the ribs so he would buckle enough to where she could grab his wrist.

Penny ripped off his latex glove. When Sheldon tried to flee, she grabbed his hand and pulled him back beside her. "Don't be such a bay-BEE!" She clenched her teeth and backpedaled against the refrigerator. "Holy Hell! Don't grip so hard!"

"I'm not gripping! You're the one who's gripping me!"

They both pulled away from one another and retracted in a collision of shoulders, their wrists contorting to escape the pressure they felt in their hands. Sheldon was the first to stop struggling, coming to grips--Who said he wasn't witty?--with the situation a lot quicker than Penny. That didn't mean he liked their predicament any more than she did. He watched her throw her weight this way and that while he clung to the island, his expression resigned. She banged their hands against the freezer door ("OW!") and plunged their arms underneath the faucet in the sink.

The ice-cold water did wonders for the ache in his palm, but they were still stuck. Not just stuck, but stuck-stuck. His left hand in her right hand.

"This can not be happening," Penny gasped. Her bangs wafted, tendrils of yellow. "Please tell me this is not happening!"

"I could, but I don't think me saying so will make it true."

Penny glared at him. "C'mon." She held up her left hand and turned to face him. "Let's try one more time."

Sheldon laced his fingers with hers, his disquiet as far as germs were concerned falling to the wayside. Penny lowered her center of gravity, her knees bent. She pressed her hip between his legs, which was highly uncomfortable for Sheldon, but he decided to put his energy into pulling their hands apart rather than complain. Though, he was poised to rant about her disregard for his privates.

With a _POP_, their hands came unstuck. A rush of relief. Gleeful smiles. A crow of victory from Penny.

Sheldon looked at his left hand. His skin was no longer irritated. His palm was somewhat bruised--

"HOLY HELL!" Penny screamed again.

Sheldon felt it, too. The same pressure, only in his right hand.

They returned to the sink and left the water running. Sheldon rolled his sleeves further up his arm so his shirt wouldn't get wet. His each and every knuckle was screaming its objections. His mind could not conceive this. Still, he did the math, which was more or less based on impossibilities, and grabbed Penny's right hand, yanking his other fingers free.

As he expected, they were stuck again. Sheldon discovered the less they tried to pull apart, the less pressure amassed as a result. It was like a Chinese finger trap, but worse for obvious reasons.

Penny groaned. "What're we gonna to do?"

Mr. Coffee chimed.

Sheldon Cooper was no longer bored.

ooo

Here were the facts:

_She and Sheldon were stuck holding hands. _

_They didn't stick to anything else, anywhere else. _

_They could switch hands for unknown reasons._

_Sheldon was going to die. Friggin'. Die. _

Penny was in a state of nerves. She knew what she was about to say wasn't going to go over well, but after ten failed attempts to wedge them apart, switching hands for every letdown and nursing the bruises and the blisters therewith, she didn't have the patience to coddle his quirks. "Sheldon," she said calmly even as she raised the butter knife to her eye-level. "There's a problem."

Sheldon blinked. The space between his eyebrows furrowed while he considered the gleam of the utensil she wielded and the _don't-freak-out-on-me_ look on her face. "This--" He squeezed her hand. "--isn't a problem?"

"There's another problem," she snapped. "I have to go to work."

"No, you don't."

"Yes, I do!"

"Let me rephrase." Sheldon's tone of voice caused Penny to tighten her grip on the handle of the butter knife. She wedged its tip between their fingers and tried to pry their hands apart. "You can't go to work."

"I have bills, Sheldon."

"And I have money, Penny. Problem solved."

"No. I am not borrowing money from you again."

Sheldon grumbled. "I suppose joining you in your mundane, mind-numbing routines at the Cheesecake Factory might help me resolve our current state of affairs."

"Good." Penny dropped the knife on the coffee table and pulled Sheldon behind her out of his apartment and across the hall.

"Where are you taking me?"

"My bathroom." Penny looked at him over her shoulder. "I have to take a shower."

"Oh, no." Sheldon's legs locked up.

Penny stumbled.

"Oh, no, no, no." Sheldon shook his head. He spun on his heel and pulled Penny back the way they came. "This is not appropriate."

Penny caught hold of her doorframe. "It's not like you're going to see me naked."

"I'm sorry. I fail to see how I won't see you naked seeing as you are currently an unwarranted appendage. If you get in the shower, won't I have to get in the shower?" He raised his eyebrows at her.

"Amp down 'n let me show you what I mean."

ooo

Sheldon sat on the floor of Penny's bathroom, leaning against the edge of her tub. His forearm was draped across the top of his head where Penny held his hand, hidden behind the shower curtain.

"You see? This isn't so bad, right?"

"I suppose," Sheldon begrudged her this victory.

Penny drew the curtain, the clink of plastic shower rings making him flinch. He watched Penny step out of the tub, fully clothed, grinning her closed-lipped grin that made him wish he had both of his hands at his disposal so he could attempt to blow up her brain with his mind. Penny crouched down beside him. The corners of her mouth twitched at his unwillingness to look her directly in the eye. "Okay, sweetie. You're going to help me get undressed like we planned and then you're going to sit down and play Sudoku." Penny fished a paperback booklet from the magazine rack beside her toilet.

Sheldon didn't bother dispensing with the derision. "Sudoku? Really?"

"Hey!" Penny slapped him on his knee. "Don't knock it 'til you try it."

"I have tried it. Sudoku isn't even moderately challenging."

"Fine. Whatever. You can think about my naked body bathing behind you, instead."

Sheldon swallowed. "Do you have a pencil?"

Penny grabbed a pen from the bottom of the magazine rack and opened the Sudoku booklet for him. "I only did, like, one of these."

"And you did it wrong."

Penny ignored him. "C'mon." She motioned for him to stand.

They helped each other to their feet.

"No peeking this time, okay?"

"Promise."

"Cross your heart."

Sheldon sighed unbearably. "Yes."

"That wasn't a question, Sheldon. Cross your heart."

"Very well." He drew a tiny X over his chest. "But I refuse to hope to die. Though, by the end of his venture, I might wish I were dead."

"Ha ha," Penny droned. "Very funny." She stepped back into the tub and pulled the curtain to hide herself from him.

Sheldon turned his back. It wouldn't have been so awkward if he hadn't felt Penny shift her weight while she undressed. His adam's apple bobbed when he saw her bottoms helicopter over the shower rod and into the wall. "Oh, God." Then he felt her top fall against their clasped hands. The urge to jump in the shower with her--not to see her naked, but to bathe--was almost overpowering.

"Switch hands."

Sheldon did as he was told. Penny tossed her top to join her bottoms in an unorganized heap.

Sheldon wanted to pass out.

They switched hands again.

Sheldon sat down in a daze, resting his arm across the top of his head like before.

"How're you holdin' up?"

"Fair."

"Good."

The shower started running.

Sheldon tried to focus all of his attention on--to quote Wolowitz--a piddly-ass assortment of mind-benders for the intellectually challenged, but his mind was far too superior to devote even a fraction of his genius on Penny's Sudoku. He solved the problems, sure, the pen in his hand practically burning a hole through the paper. Penny, however, proved to be a greater distraction than he had anticipated.

Her wet, naked, and sudsy leg brushed against their hands and Sheldon dropped the Sudoku booklet. The pen bounced across the floor beside the toilet. Sheldon was, as Penny would say, screwed.

Sheldon began listing the elements aloud, starting with Hydrogen. When he felt Penny's skin again? Rough with goosebumps, hot and slippery from the water? When she asked him what he was going on about over the roar of the shower, her voice reminiscent of the times she sang him Soft Kitty? Sheldon reflexively jumped to his feet. His mind, in its entirety, screamed at him to retrieve the pen.

Penny yelped.

Snap, snap, snap, the shower rings broke.

Sheldon suddenly found himself lying flat on his stomach, a flowery shower curtain obstructing his vision, with a Penny-sized weight sprawled across his back.

For the first time in his life, his mind stopped functioning. It stopped grinding on potential proof with regards to string theory, gnawing at facts like a starving animal. For the first time in his life, he had nothing to say.

Adversely, Penny cursed enough for the both of them. _"Damn it, Sheldon!"_ She slapped him across the back of his head. (He didn't appreciate the assault on his person even though he reasoned he deserved a swift punch to the throat. He would rather she stop squirming around.) "What th' Hell?"

"I'm sorry," Sheldon apologized lamely.

There must have been something in his voice that soothed Penny's temper to simmer to a low flame because she heaved a sigh of resignation. "Just...help me up. And keep your eyes closed or I will castrate you. You know those blue ball ornaments people hang on the hitches of their trucks or whatever? The ones you hate so much? Yeah. Your balls, my bumper. Think about it."

He thought about it.

"Lest you forget, Moonpie. You can run, but you can't hide."

Sheldon gulped.

Penny pushed herself off his back and knelt beside him. Naked.

Sheldon shut his eyes.

They balanced each other out, standing to their feet. Penny was still naked.

She pulled him back toward the shower and turned off the water. "I'll save shaving for another day."

"That is acceptable."

Penny scoffed at him.

Sheldon heard her grab her uniform off the sink. Naked.

Sheldon cursed his appreciation of fine art. The Birth of Venus and Rodin's The Kiss and The Rape of the Sabine Women kept cropping up in his mind. "Mother was right. Hell is real."

"You're doing fine."

They walked hand-in-hand into Penny's bedroom. "See? You don't even have to help me this time."

Sheldon assumed she was referring to the night she dislocated her shoulder and he discreetly rubbed the hand that had cupped her breast against his pant leg--the hand Penny wasn't holding. "I'd rather not. You told me not to earlier."

"Not to what?"

"Not to look." Sheldon felt Penny shimmy into her panties and her bluejean skirt. He assisted her only when he feared she would fall, stiffening his arm in support. "First, you threaten my genitals and now you tell me to see."

"It was an expression. And that threat? Yeah. That was more of a promise."

They switched hands while Penny struggled into her bra, irritating Sheldon with her commentary. "I hate sports bras, but clasps are, like, just asking for trouble this morning."

Sheldon didn't reply.

"Okay. You can open your eyes now."

"No, thank you."

"Don't be such a prude, Sheldon, I'm covered--"

The sound of Penny's apartment door opening and closing altered the end of her sentence from 'up' to, _"Oh my God!"_ She pulled Sheldon flush against her body, folding behind his long arms and legs in an attempt to hide herself. Sheldon hunched forward in his haste to escape the feel of Penny invading his personal space, which sent her bending over backward at his knee-jerk response.

They fell over onto the bed.

Sheldon straddled Penny, scared to death he had crushed her. He had always been tall and bumbling for his age when he was a boy, often ridiculed for his lack of coordination and his misfortunes around breakable objects. So even now at twenty-nine years of age, he cringed at the thought of destroying a human being even though his mind told him that smashing Penny to pieces was slim to none.

She gaped at him.

Sheldon pinned their hands to the mattress above her head before she socked him in the nose with his own knuckles.

Penny grabbed him by the waist of his pants. "Your balls are mine!"

"Thanks for letting me borrow your spare vest," said a familiar voice. "I need to stop wearing my uniform to schoo--oh."

Sheldon and Penny turned their heads.

Bernadette balked. She wore a similar bluejean skirt to Penny's and a short-sleeved button down. "Am I interrupting anything?"

"Yes," Sheldon breathed. "Thank you."

"No," Penny admonished. "Thank you."

Bernadette blushed. "I knocked. I guess you didn't hear me."

"This?" Penny laughed. "This is not what it looks like."

"Sure. Okay. Um. I'm just gonna..." Bernadette took a step backward. "...go." She put her knees to the breeze before Penny could explain herself.

"She's quick," Sheldon mused.

"Yeah. She used to run track in high school. Weak ankles, though."

"Shame."

"Hm."

Sheldon looked down at Penny. He smiled, relieved she wasn't trying to murder him anymore.

Penny smiled back. Then she punched him in the nuts.

ooo

Penny climbed through the passenger side door so she could sit in the driver's seat. Sheldon followed, sullen, a frozen bag of peas pressed against his crotch. "Great," she said once she cranked her car. "Right on time."

"Yes. Well…forgive me for not leaping for joy."

"Bad back you know," Penny added.

Sheldon stared at her. "You have a bad back?"

"No, no. The Lion King." Penny drew a line down the side of her face with her free hand. "Scar. Simba. Ring any bells?"

"Yes, but." Sheldon licked his lips. He turned toward her. "How is it you can remember that specific line of dialogue and yet you're incapable of remembering why _ma = mg_ and its significance to the world of science?" He helped her shift into reverse.

Penny tilted her head, her smile an overture of bad news. "You're this close to having my foot up your ass." She didn't even have to measure what he assumed was a meager distance unto his doom for Sheldon to understand he was in it deep. He hated to think about how painful it would be to travel from point A to point B stuck holding hands and, ahem, Penny's foot--

Penny squealed her tires when she backed out of her parking spot.

"Devil, thy name is woman," Sheldon muttered to himself.


	2. Chapter 2

Title: Stuck on You  
Author: Talitha Koum  
Spoilers: Recent episodes.  
Rating: PG-13 for mild language.  
Word Count: 2700+  
Disclaimer: I do not own The Big Bang Theory. Insert witticism here. 

ooo

"Mr. Hugh, I know this looks weird. I promise it's not my fault."

Sheldon _humph_ed his difference of opinion, but he kept his mouth shut lest his genitals suffer another low blow. Penny's boss was a scary man in an unconventional sense. His office was a disaster. Highly unorganized and flamboyantly patriotic. (Sheldon was--_What's the word Penny liked to use?_--jonesin' to explain that eagles didn't necessarily stand for America. The gaudy, wooden statue on the corner of his desk clutched a snake in its talons, which symbolized Mexico. Sheldon buttoned his lip, though, going as far as making the motions and pressing a heavy finger against his philtrum. Difficult with the peas and everything.) Mr. Hugh was small and mousy. His face was weathered and brown and the deeply furrowed wrinkles around his eyes emphasized their depth. His wire-frame glasses made the same fragile noises as Meemaw's bifocals when she cleaned them.

Nostalgia warmed Sheldon's heart even as Mr. Hugh took to rubbing the smudges of grease off his lenses on the collar of his flannel shirt, doing more harm than good. "My apologies, Mr. Hugh," he blurted. Sheldon lowered his buttoning-finger and hopped in front of Penny. "I take full responsibility. I promise…" He put his hand (and peas) over his heart probably because of all the flags. "…that I will not hamper Penny's duty to your restaurant. In fact, I will take it upon myself to better improve my friend and neighbor as a waitress."

Penny elbowed him. "Don't listen to Sheldon, sir. He's nuts."

"I resent that."

"You'd be _more_ nuts if you _didn't_ resent that, sweetie." Penny picked imaginary lint off his shoulder just to exasperate him.

Mr. Hugh glanced from Sheldon, to Penny, to Sheldon again. "You look familiar. Have you worked here before?"

"Briefly."

It wasn't a lie. Sort of.

Sheldon tried to smile.

"I will allow this." Mr. Hugh rose from his chair on creaking knees. _"For today."_ He strode to his office door and opened it for them to go. "Next time, Penelope, leave your sexual escapades at home."

"But he's not--"

"But we're not--"

"_Out." _

Penny and Sheldon hung their heads, simultaneously dejected. They left Mr. Hugh's office in companionable silence. They met each other's eyes once they reached the hostess station and ridiculed the man under their breath:

"What a douche."

"He'll never keep his glasses clean that way."

"We should totally curse him."

"I don't know any curses. Also, voodoo or witchcraft or whatever deluded practice you're planning on cursing him with isn't real."

"Real, shmeal." Penny flicked her good wrist. "May the fleas of a thousand camels infest the crotch of our enemy and may his arms be too short to scratch."

Sheldon also flicked his wrist. (Not as enthusiastically.) "May all his BBQ bacon burn."

"Nice try."

"Sarcasm?"

Penny shook her head, downtrodden. "No, actually. And isn't that just a little sad?"

ooo

Penny dragged Sheldon through the bus room incredibly sensitive to the looks she and he were receiving. She snagged a pitcher off the wire rack against the wall and winced at the busboys on duty. Kody, a canker-like individual--he grew on you--and Rob, a self-important car enthusiast who acted ten years too young.

Sheldon shied away from the piles of dirty dishes.

"I didn't know it was _Take Your Boyfriend To Work Day_!" Kody laughed.

Rob leaned against the sink and folded his arms across his chest. "You can give me a hand any time," he joked. "If you catch my drift."

"Bite me."

"It would be my pleasure."

Penny fended him off with her empty pitcher.

"Stop that," Sheldon reprimanded her attempts to give Rob a concussion. "You'll only encourage him to flirt more vociferously, notwithstanding your disinterest."

Kody wavered, dazed at Sheldon's _not-so-impressive-for-Sheldon_ vocabulary. "Dude."

"What?" Rob asked. "Me hittin' on your girl upsetting your constitution?"

"No. Your blatant disrespect for Penny as a person is what's upsetting my constitution. Honestly," he said, rolling his eyes at what he had been referring to as dead weight ever since she made him put his bag of peas in the produce cooler. ("If I find my food has been tampered with in any way, shape, or form, it's your fault, Penny. Sunday is Split Pea Soup Day.") "You've broken Wolowitz' nose for less."

"Well." Penny clenched her teeth, brandishing her pitcher at the evasive Rob. "I was trying to--"

"You like the attention." Sheldon's eyes widened, his curiosity piqued. "Fascinating."

Penny blushed. "No I…" She thrust her pitcher under Kody's nose. "Have you got somethin' else to say?"

He clutched his steel wool like his life depended on it.

"Good." Penny jerked Sheldon behind her, kicking the swinging door to the dining room wide open. She stalled at the sight of her boss holding a yellow shirt in his hands and the door swung back to hit Sheldon in his side.

"Ah, Penelope. There you are." Mr. Hugh handed the shirt to Sheldon, who considered his arms with vague suspicion.

For one, terrifying second, Penny feared he would bring up fleas or camels, but he didn't. His lips remained zipped. She fanned her reddening face, thanking God.

"What were you two doing back there?" asked Mr. Hugh.

"We were having a stymied discussion of Penny's preferences with regards to sexual partners."

Penny covered her eyes. "You wear me out, Sheldon."

"That's what she said!" Rob bellowed from the sink.

Penny backhanded the air in his direction, insinuation for him to shut his trap. "I had to put Sheldon's peas in the cooler, Mr. Hugh."

"That's what she said!" Kody mimicked Rob.

Sheldon turned to look at them. "That _is_ what she said." He spoke slowly like the busboys were hard of hearing.

"Someone shoot me." Penny smiled at Mr. Hugh, who finally went about his business, and led Sheldon through the dining room, winding around tables and servers and customers as was her second nature. (Little did she know. For every obstacle she avoided, Sheldon made a mess.)

"Where are we going?" he sounded scared. Like she was taking him to help her shower again or something. _Pssht. _

"The bathroom. You need to cha--oh, balls." Yet another obstacle: Which restroom were they supposed to use? They stood together, side-by-side, looking back and forth between _Men_ and _Women_. "The women's room is probably cleaner."

"No doubt," Sheldon agreed. "But Penny, I make a point not to use any restroom other than my own."

"You don't even use the toilet at CalTech?"

"Not unless it's an emergency." He mumbled something about nutritional suppositories.

"Okay. Yeah. TMI, Sheldon." Penny shouldered them inside. The restroom was empty, glory hallelujah, but she locked herself and Sheldon in the farthest stall from the door anyway. She snapped her fingers, standing adjacent to the commode. "C'mon, c'mon. We don't have all day."

Sheldon shifted from one foot to the other. "You have to close your eyes."

"Why? I've seen you before."

His cheeks flushed enough for Penny to notice.

"Aw, sweetie, are you shy?"

"You know perfectly well I am."

Penny appeased him, a sly grin sneaking across her face. "I'll play nice," she lied. Revenge was sweet.

Sheldon pinned their hands against the stall so he could steady himself.

Penny's breath hitched. She cleared her throat, the memory of a similar situation involving Kurt at the club where he worked as a bouncer clouding her senses. Sheldon's labored breath did nothing to hinder her wayward thoughts. Penny opened her eyes and appraised Sheldon's scrawny chest to clear her mind. He flattened the Cheesecake Factory polo over his stomach, but not before she took note of his trail. She sniggered. Not because she had been caught with her hand in the cookie jar, or whatever. It was because Sheldon--_her Sheldon_--was quite the specimen, surprise-surprise. She'd seen his bare chest before, of course, but Vaporub was not the stuff of ogling. His muscle definition was pitiable compared to most guys she dated. He wasn't the type she assumed would be treed by a chicken, however. "How now brown cow."

"You said you wouldn't!"

"So did you."

The left side of Sheldon's face twitched. "Touché."

Penny helped him pull the shirt over his head and down his chest.

"Your hands are cold," he complained.

"Don't be such a baby. Count your blessings. You're getting special treatment, all things considered."

"The disseverment of your and Leonard's relationship was not my fault."

"Yeah, but you and me? Here? All you, big boy."

Sheldon made a squeaky noise in protest. "You were the one who intruded my apartment early this morning in those scanty pajamas. You were the one who initiated this entire--_oh_. What? Why are you stopping? I still need your assistance."

"My hand's getting tired. Let's switch."

"Alright."

Penny sighed blissfully. It was as if she had discovered the long lost empire of Ben and Jerry's during her time of the month. Or a five hundred dollar gift certificate to Pay Less. "That feels so, freakin' amazing." She flexed her fingers. She kneaded her palm with her chin, making herself weak in the knees. She now fully understood the meaning of hurt so good.

"If you swear never to breathe a word of this to anyone," Sheldon began, his expression one of: _I'll scratch your back if you scratch mine. This once._

They massaged each other's hands.

"Oh, wow," Penny moaned, slumping against the door. "Oh. Oh, wow. You should do this for a living."

"I do have a basic understanding of masseu--ow! Not so hard!"

"Sorry."

"You would be surprised at what you can learn on ."

Penny finished ironing out the wrinkles in Sheldon's shirt before stepping outside the stall. An elderly woman stared at them through the oblong mirror hanging over the counter. She stood stock still, the tube of lipstick in her possession having drawn a crescent from the corner of her mouth to the lobe of her ear.

Penny recollected her and Sheldon's conversation. "Son of a…"

ooo

Sheldon braced himself against a table alienated from the rest of the dining room, referred to as _The Odd Ball_ by the employees. When he promised Mr. Hugh he would make Penny a better waitress, he wasn't joking, but he didn't expect the little man to impose on him so early in the game. Come to find, it wasn't so much _imposing_ as it was _I'm-going-to-ride-this-ridiculousness-for-all-it's-worth-so-you-better-do-as-I-say_. The dining room was at a lull. The waiters were still serving tables and the busboys were still clearing plates, but he and Penny were the center of attention. It wasn't his superiority complex deluding his perceptions, either.

Penny waited for him to show her how to 'wipe a table properly' since she 'didn't know how'.

_Relax_, Sheldon told himself. He bit his bottom lip. _Pretend she's not here…_ (Penny tickled his spine, saying something about the curve of his back, her feather-light touch derailing his train of thought.) _…nevermind._ Instead of trying to imagine that Penny didn't exist, Sheldon focused his attention elsewhere. The blinds were open. Bars of sunlight striped the table, accentuating dust like tinsel. It reminded him of prison.

They were going to be stuck like this forever. He was never winning that blasted Nobel.

Sheldon shook his head. He wiped the tabletop with a rag wet with cleaner. Meticulous. Always meticulous. He arranged the catsup, the sugar caddy, and the salt and pepper shakers front to back and pushed them against the wall.

Penny smirked. "Like this?" She stole the rag from Sheldon's hand and wiped a sloppy S-shape.

Sheldon pinched the bridge of his nose.

"No?"

He nodded.

"There're no bad students. Only bad teachers."

Sheldon frowned. No sooner did he hear the playfulness in Penny's voice did he hear the malevolence. "You're trying my patience on purpose." He didn't really blame h--

--yes he did.

Penny twisted her fingers against her chest. She whimpered, "You're mad at me?"

_Oh, dear God,_ Sheldon thought. It was then he heard the nigh undetectable _hic-hiccing_, pre-sob noise he loathed with every fiber of his being. "For goodness sake, don't cry. This is _Project Gorilla_ all over again. One cries because one is sad, not because one is a failure."

Penny did as she was told, much to Sheldon's shock. She wrinkled her nose at him, her emerald eyes devoid of tears. "You're not very good at this, are you? You're supposed to apologize." She quirked her eyebrows, expecting him to follow orders. (Her beauty was tempting, but Sheldon's pride overruled his hormones quickly and without mercy. He was better than that. He was Homo novus.) "Then I'm supposed to say thump, thump, thump. I think your heart's grown a size or three? You know? Like a bonding moment? HA! Bonding moment!"

Sheldon was confused. "Thanks for the checkup, Dr. Seuss."

"My pleasure, Mr. Scrooge."

"You mean Grinch."

"Same difference."

Damn, if it wasn't going to be a long day.

ooo

It took over an hour of waiting tables repetitiously for Sheldon to get the hang of things; to _not_ try and dissuade customers from ordering anything other than a BBQ Bacon Burger, to _not_ compulsively pre-bus a table on one side of Penny's section while she delivered drinks to the other, to _not_ refill a customer's glass even though they were out of Diet Coke and they insisted they wanted no more to drink.

Noob.

Sheldon's eidetic memory came in handy, lucky duck. Not once did Penny have to resort to her notepad no matter the number of people dining in.

"What's going on here?" more than one person stuck their nose where it didn't belong. "You two dating?"

"It's a social experiment," Sheldon always responded, which seemed enough of an explanation for the regulars who knew more about Bernadette's flesh-eating bacteria than they ever wanted to know. Those who were stupid enough to inquire further soon wished they hadn't. Sheldon spoke of Freud and the social sciences as if he had the utmost respect for the field of Psychology, though Penny knew he didn't. He didn't respect anything but himself.

Whatever. She played her part, nodding and smiling, never once bothering to listen long enough to realize Sheldon's social experiment was, like, _sensuous_ in origin until she heard the word erogenous.

"…not an erogenous zone that most men think of, but from what I've learned thanks to Wolowitz, most women love having their wrists kissed and nibbled--"

Penny dumped her pitcher of water over Sheldon's head. _"What th' Hell are you talking about?"_

The damage was done. Every man in the Cheesecake Factory thought Sheldon was a genius.

Ironic, much?

She was going to murder him.

ooo

Sheldon was disgusted. How could Penny hold her head high, day in and day out, when her job was so demeaning and underappreciated? How could she come home with a smile on her face when she really _was_ treated like a carbohydrate delivery system rather than a human being? Waiting tables only reaffirmed why he disliked people to the extent he did.

Sheldon crumpled his Guest Check ticket into a ball. Penny sat across from him by the window, one foot perched on the edge of her seat and the other swinging beneath the table. She rested her chin on her knee and kicked Sheldon in his shin.

He glared.

The afternoon was muggy. Clouds spared them the heat of the Pasadena sun after the air conditioning sputtered and wheezed like an asthma attack and died. The dining room was an oven. Customers were scarce.

Penny pinned her hair to the top of her head with her pen. She did this well with only one hand. Her neck was sweaty.

Sheldon was hard-pressed to keep his eyes on his work. Because he was admiring her dexterity.

Yes. Dexterity.

Penny pulled her cell phone out of her apron. Her thumb clumsily slid across the keys, the rhythmic tic-tic forcing Sheldon to keep time with a tap of his foot. "What's the matter, Sheldor?" she asked. "Has your Muse given you the slip?"

Sheldon crumpled another ticket. He glared at the lines, cross his inspiration was so elusive. "Unlike the last time I was stuck, working here hasn't helped me think. I won't be able to put my theories into practice until tomorrow."

"We can't drop by CalTech after work?"

"No. Dr. Gablehauser…" Sheldon stalled. "…it'll have to wait."

Penny's cell-phone vibrated. She viewed the message and sighed. "I just canceled my date tonight."

"Why?"

"In case you forgot?" Penny waved their hands.

"Not _why_ as in _why aren't you going_. _Why_ as in _why are you dating_."

Penny sucked on the inside of her cheek, her eyes heavy-lidded and skeptical. "There's a little something us normal people like to call rebound sex."

"I don't understand you. A relationship ruins your happiness so your solution is to enter into another relationship?"

"I'm not entering into anything. That's the point. Doesn't matter, anyway. You're my date tonight."

Sheldon pointedly ignored the laughter in her voice.

Bernadette crouched down beside their table, looking at Penny as if she was on her deathbed.

Penny grabbed at Bernadette with her free hand, thirsty for understanding. "Bernadette! I am _so_ sorry about this morning--"

"Mr. Hugh told me everything," Bernadette waved her off, embarrassed. "He seems to think you two are pulling the wool over his eyes, but he doesn't know Sheldon very well, does he? Besides, I'm the one who should apologize. I didn't give you a chance to explain."

Penny's smile brightened the unlit dining room. "Why'd you come in? I heard half of Pasadena's blacked out. Don't you have the afternoon off in that case?"

"Yeah, but I thought I'd return your vest."

"You snagged it, huh?"

"That _is_ the reason why I came over. Why would I leave it?"

"I dunno. Not because it looked like Sheldon and I were about to bump uglies or anything."

"_Please."_ Sheldon fumbled his pencil. "I'll consent to never referring to sex as coitus as long as you never refer to it as bumping uglies."

"Deal."

They switched hands. Sheldon taught himself to be ambidextrous so he continued working. Penny rubbed his knuckles and then allowed him to rub hers.

Bernadette pressed her lips together. She performed a little wiggle sitting on the backs of her legs. "It seems you guys are taking everything in stride."

"As well as can be expected…"

Sheldon drowned out the rest of their conversation since it no longer pertained to himself or _being-stuck-together-for-the-foreseeable-future_. (Bernadette's AM classes bored him to tears. Also, Wolowitz and Leonard were the least of his worries.) He was mulling over his failed attempts to recall what it was he had created earlier that morning when he noticed that his handwritten notes had strayed from numbers and symbols to English. Unconsciously, he had scribbled the word _DATE_.


	3. Chapter 3

Title: Stuck on You  
Author: Talitha Koum  
Spoilers: Recent episodes.  
Rating: PG-13 for mild language.  
Word Count: 4100+  
Disclaimer: I do not own The Big Bang Theory. Insert witticism here.

ooo

"Penny, this is unsanitary."

"I can't hold it anymore, Dr. Bladder of Steel." Penny handed Sheldon her cell-phone. "Look. Just scroll through my music and play something loud for yourself. But whatever you do don't turn around. Don't freak out and yank me off the toilet, either."

Sheldon fussed with the impossibly small buttons of Penny's Razzle, his lip curling at the variety of genres. "Hootie and the Blowfish? Green Day? The Phantom of the Opera? Vienna Teng? System of a Down? You are a paradox, Penny."

"_Pick something, Sheldon, or I'm goin' to town with or without my earphones in your ears."_

Sheldon could almost sense her reaching for her zipper. "Alright! You don't have to be so bossy!" He hesitated. He considered. He opened and closed his mouth more than once. "Have these recently been sanitized--"

_Zip_.

Sheldon selected a song at random and hurriedly plugged his ears. It was just his luck that he was forced to listen to _All Is Love_ by Karen O & the Kids, which wasn't nearly loud enough at the beginning to drown out Penny relieving herself. When it was loud enough, Sheldon winced at the singing, but then, inexplicably, his foot began to tap and his head began to bob and his hips began to swing.

"My view isn't the best for you to shake it like a Polaroid picture," he heard Penny say over the chorus of children.

Sheldon sulked. The next song played: _I'm on a Boat_ by The Lonely Island.

_Oh, good Lord. _

Penny tapped him on the shoulder even as he flinched at the language. He walked with Penny to the sink, leaning as far away from her as possible.

"That wasn't so bad," Penny quipped.

"Yes. When I have to urinate, should I let you listen to my music?"

"What kind of music do you listen to?"

"Jazz. I'm a fan of Ben Webster."

"No offense, but I'd rather listen to you pee."

"This coming from a woman who enjoys _The Humpty Dance_."

ooo

Penny clocked herself out. She and Sheldon stepped outside where gridlock was at a fever pitch. Over half of Pasadena was out of power, just heaping on the reasons why this was the worst day of Penny's life. Her heart squirmed in her chest when she said, "C'mon, Sheldon. I'll take you to buy some new shoes."

"Why?"

Penny was tired. It showed in her face. "If we're stuck like this forever, you're going to have to come back here with me, you know." She unlocked her driver's side door, forgetting she and Sheldon were holding hands. Penny cursed under her breath and stomped around to the passenger's side. "You have to go to work, too, though. I don't know how we're going to do this if--"

"Penny," Sheldon cut her off. He helped her climb through into the driver's seat before he sat down. "I would kick Leonard out and you would come live with me. I would work from home and accompany you to the Cheesecake Factory if I had to."

Penny stared at him, eyes wide. "Really?"

"Of course. It would be impractical for me to live in your apartment."

"Why? We'd be sharing the same bed."

"Yes, but my spot is not in your apartment."

"What about the spot--"

"Doesn't count. That spot is not my point of consistency."

Somehow, Penny felt a hundred times better. Maybe it was because Sheldon didn't hesitate to explain to her his plan in the event of a worse case scenario. Or maybe it was because he looked so calm in the face of crisis for once. Or maybe it was because his hair was still rumpled from when she had dumped water all over his head. (She secretly enjoyed the moments when he loomed and gave her the Moving Finger. Luckily, the power went out mere minutes after she drenched him so he rescinded his desire to change, the heat curbing his anger.) Either way, Penny smiled. "Y'know, Moonpie? I think we're going to be just fine." She hugged his hand against her face.

"Please don't call me that, Penny. I don't know how many times I've told you not to call me that."

Penny jumped when someone rapped their knuckles against her window. She shielded her eyes against the sun to look outside and gasped when she saw Michael, her canceled date.

"What's this?" he asked, pointing at Sheldon. "I thought you said something suddenly came up!"

"Something did," Penny argued. The mental image of the three of them trying to fit on Michael's motorcycle killed her hopes to reschedule. "We're stuck."

"You expect me to believe that?"

Penny turned the tables. "Is that why you showed up? Do you not trust me?"

"For good reason!"

Penny shifted her car into reverse. She peeled out of her parking spot, a hairsbreadth from clipping Michael in his side. She chased him back to his bike, screaming, _"I DON'T CHEAT!"_

"I think he's got the gist, Penny," Sheldon said after Michael fled the scene.

Penny hit him in the shoulder with his own hand.

The both of them stared at the traffic.

"So…"

"Walking?"

"I suppose."

Penny pulled back into her parking spot and locked her car.

"If you're concerned with your date's opinion of you, don't be. You're clearly too good for him." Sheldon did a double-take at Penny's bemused expression. "Isn't that the saying?"

"Where did you hear that from?"

"From you. You told Leonard you were too good for him the night you terminated your relationship."

"Damn straight."

ooo

Sheldon was nervous. Not just nervous, nervous. Oh, no. His anxiety attacks trumped those of lesser human beings. While some, deluded mortals may suffer bad cases of the sweats and/or hyperventilation, Sheldon considered their plights nothing more than a grain of sand in the shorts of his metaphor. But his nerves? Yeah. Sandcastle worthy.

Death seemed eminent. He felt like he was going to throw up. Two times.

The circumstances what made Sheldon's stomach knot thwarted his insides--here, there, and everywhere--cold first, then hot. Falling like rain, rising like larks.

_Dear God, I'm going to hork all over Penny's outfit,_ he thought. _Then she's going to castrate me.  
_  
Honestly, though. How many times had he walked with Penny, talked with Penny? How many times had they laundered their clothes together on Saturday night? In a sense, his current predicament--not the _stuck-holding-hands_ but the _stuck-with-Penny_--wasn't foreign. It wasn't like he failed at idle chitchat as far as Penny was concerned. It wasn't like the bar was set so high he couldn't hope to rally her spirits, her interest, her anything. Penny wasn't a hard woman to please. He knew her very well. Too well, perhaps. Maybe he was over-thinking things.

Sheldon scoffed at himself. He was over-thinking squat. A new element had presented itself to the equation of their friendship paradigm. A tiny, insignificant one lost in a matrix of zeroes. Things were suddenly complicated. Er, _more_ complicated. Sheldon couldn't regard Penny as a less intelligent than he, aesthetically pleasing, brash neighbor. Not anymore. Those were the minority. The majority now poppity-popped like the carbonated bubbles of his Diet Coke during break. (The Diet Coke he couldn't drink for all his crummy in the tummy issues.) No sooner did Sheldon think ambiguous, he thought unorthodox.

The last of which made his face burn.

She had called him her date. She needed him, yet again, and he felt responsible.

_Damned Google._ Sheldon hated search engines. Whenever he would ask a question in his vernacular, he never found the search results he was looking for. He was forced to dumb himself down in order to read what he needed.

_To go on a date._

'We all want to find that special someone we _like_…'

Sheldon returned to Google's homepage.

_How to tell if I genuinely like someone,_ he typed left-handed, repulsed. He reasoned he must feel pretty strongly for Penny since he had degraded himself by actually typing two sentence fragments. Before he hit the enter key, he made sure Penny was preoccupied with her Facebook on Leonard's computer.

"This is friggin' amazing!" Penny scrolled through her profile pictures. For a moment, Sheldon thought she was browsing porn. "How is it you have the internet?"

"4G wireless routers."

Penny seemed distracted enough.

_Click. _

1.) Get to know them better.

Three years ought to be sufficient.

2.) Stop and consider why you enjoy the person's company.

Sheldon compiled a list, but he cut himself off after reason ten. _This step has no merit._

3.) Consider how many times you think about the person.

Sheldon mentally changed the word _consider_ to _contemplate_--he loathed repetitious words when reading--and ignored the step entirely.

4.) Think how often you laugh at their jokes etc.

Penny wasn't very funny.

5.) Consider how much you try to be near them.

_Pfft. Consider._ He lived next door to the woman. He was stuck holding her hand for crying out loud.

6.) Think about how you feel when you touch them, by accident or on purpose.

Sheldon didn't.

7.) If you feel you're ready for a relationship, and are confident enough for a positive response, then go ahead and ask them out.

Sheldon immediately Googled what it meant to _take a girl out_ and came to the conclusion he was ill suited. He had no car. Penny had no car. They couldn't go far.

Then it hit him.

He was a genius. Of course he was a genius.

He knocked on his desk and uttered her name three times to get her attention.

Penny glared. _"What?"_

"Would you be so kind as to join me for a stroll around the block so I can break in those…" Sheldon gagged on the impending lie. "…lovely shoes you helped me buy?" He had hoped the teenaged employee at the Pay Less would refuse to take his card since the power was out, but--_hip-hip-hurray_--she had an old-school slide carbon copy machine. Again, Sheldon reasoned he must feel pretty strongly for Penny if he was willing to endure new-shoe blisters. (That and he looked like a clown.)

It was exactly one block from their apartment building when Sheldon realized he liked Penny. She told him, "A Buddhist monk goes to a hotdog stand, right? And he tells the vender, 'Make me one with everything.'"

It was the most ridiculous thing he had ever--

He laughed. Out loud.

Sweet Jesus. He was ruined.

Okay, okay, so he blew the I-like-her thing out of proportion. It wasn't so bad. His mind wasn't numb to traits of Penny's he found less than desirable. He didn't have the urge to fall all over himself and drape his jacket across a puddle in the street so she wouldn't have to get her feet wet. (Doing so? Highly unsanitary. Not only that, Penny enjoyed stepping in puddles so that completely defeated the purpose of his train of thought.) His view of her didn't change. She was still who she was. He was still who he was. They were themselves and nothing was different.

This was about the same as when he finally decided they were friends.

Good. He hated change.

Now for the pièce de résistance.

ooo

After fifteen minutes of walking, Penny had to ask, "Where are we going?"

"It's a surprise."

Sheldon led her to a strange building that looked more like a castle than a house. All tiers and stone walls and wrought iron. When Sheldon knocked on the door, a young man answered. He couldn't have been more than twenty years old. His hair was long and curly and he wore a pin-stripped suit and a matching fedora. His eyes popped when he saw them there. Penny guessed his expression was one of disgust or devotion, the few looks Sheldon ever received.

"Dr. Cooper!" The young man clapped his hands like a child. (Devotion it was.) "What brings you to my humble abode?" He made to grab Penny's hand and kiss it, but she pulled away.

"I need a favor."

"Anything for you." The young man stepped aside and let them in. His house/faux-castle looked like a museum. (It had power.) There were glass cases everywhere. Weapons, art, sculpture, everything. He pried a particular sword off his mantel and held it in his defense, smiling big. "How do you like my latest investment? Couple million."

Penny choked.

"You're not doing yourself any favors handling it like that," Sheldon said, a pained look on his face.

"Oh. You're right. Of course you're right." The young man put the sword away.

_What is this?_ Penny wondered. _Some kind of trust fund baby?_

"I would like to show my friend Penny your Chihuly."

"Chihuly." The young man bounced off, squawking at them to follow.

Penny whispered out of the side of her mouth, "Who is this guy?"

"Bernard Moceri III. He donated a large sum of money to CalTach last spring. I was forced to attend a dinner in his honor and came to know him a little better against my will. He's eccentric, but a not unpleasant person to be around."

Penny sniggered. _Sheldon just called someone eccentric!_

Bernard escorted Penny and Sheldon through more of his personal museum where a long hall awaited them. It was dark and although Sheldon was not a fan of darkness, he pulled Penny inside and had her stand in the middle of the corridor.

"You should enjoy this." It wasn't a suggestion.

She sneered. "If this is some kind of--"

The lights flickered on and Penny caught her breath. Large, glass flowers of different shapes and colors were suspended over their heads, casting yellows and blues and pinks on to the floor and across their faces like a milieu of stained-glass windows. All the glitz and glam sparkled in Penny's eyes. She murmured, "Holy smokes."

"They reminded me of you," Sheldon said. "Your Penny Blossoms."

Penny boggled. "Why did you do this for me?"

"Aren't I your date this evening?"

Penny palmed herself in the face. "No…yes…you shouldn't take everything I say so seriously."

"Does this displease you?"

"No." Penny sighed. "That's the problem."

ooo

Sheldon climbed the stairs to the fourth floor. Penny ascended to the top one step in front of him just like she always did. He was forced to follow her to her door.

To quote Raj, he was rightly and truly screwed.

Penny was snide about the whole thing. "Way to see me home, Romeo."

Sheldon didn't know what, exactly, he wanted from her. For Penny to admit she liked him, too? It was the knowing that was getting to him. He had to know. He always had to know.

"Call me old fashioned," Sheldon drawled by accident.

Penny tilted her head to one side. "I had no idea you were so chivalrous. I should have made you carry me home." She bent her knees in turn, rotating her ankles like her feet were sore from their walk. She fooled no one.

"You know I have no measurable upper body strength. That venture would have ended in disaster. At the very least, a trip to the hospital."

"Whatever, Trestle King." Penny fished her set of keys from the waistband of her pants. She jammed her apartment key into the lock of her door, leaving no room for Sheldon to wonder how it was she managed to lose her car key to the likes of 4B. She gave Sheldon a look he couldn't decipher. "I don't get you, Sheldon. Tonight was nice. You can be charming when you want. So why don't you put yourself out there and play the field?"

"The field? Is this a football analogy?"

Penny left her keys to dangle. "Why don't you date?"

"I only just determined I like you as a person, a woman I've known for three years. Dating strangers is beyond me."

"That's why you date them! So you can get to know them!"

"But I don't want to get to know them."

"You got to know me, didn't you? Was that so bad?"

"Incredibly."

Penny gave up. She left the door open so she could see when Leonard, Howard, and Raj got back home from Las Vegas.

"Dating is too much work," Sheldon clucked. He followed Penny into her bedroom where she kicked off her shoes and dug around in her drawers for her pajamas. "Why do men subject themselves to so much trouble when nothing is in it for them? I don't get it."

"There's something in it for them, alright."

"What's that?"

Penny grabbed Sheldon by the collar of his uniform, pulled him to hunch, and kissed the corner of his mouth. "Thank you for taking me to see the Chihuly."

"…oh…"

He got it.

ooo

Sheldon tried contacting Leonard over a dozen times. Leonard would either let his calls go to voicemail or hang up on him. "I have urgent matters to discuss with you concerning Penny," Sheldon spoke in almost-monotone. "Call me when you can." Pause. "Sheldon Coop--"

Penny hit the end button. _"Really?"_

"It's habit. Meemaw tells me the time when she leaves me voicemails even though it's unnecessary."

Penny licked her spoon clean. At Sheldon's twitching eye, she also licked her mouth clean. "And that means you have to do something unnecessary, too?"

"Nostalgia."

Penny scraped the bottom of the cardboard tub for the last bite of _almost-completely-melted_, chocolaty goodness. "What do you want to do now?"

"We could play a game."

"I'd rather chew my hand off."

"You'd rather do a lot of things than participate in something I find pleasure in, so I've noticed. Also, I doubt you have room for your wrist. You've consumed more than the recommended serving size of Chunky Monkey."

Penny concentrated on the Chihuly so she wouldn't stab Sheldon between the eyes with her spoon. "Why don't we watch a movie?" Penny smiled and slapped her free hand against the counter, bouncing the spoon into the floor before Sheldon could catch it. "_OhmyGod_, we should totally watch _The Lion King_."

"We used up the batteries in both my and Leonard's laptops and you have no power."

"My laptop's fully charged."

"Why?"

"Because I plugged it in?"

"No. I mean why should we _totally_ watch _The Lion King_?"

Penny knelt while Sheldon plied to retrieve the spoon. "'Cause I mentioned it earlier today. Remember?"

"How could I forget?" Sheldon smiled his killer-Batman smile, nodding his head like, _You heard me._ "Sarcasm."

Penny _AH_ed. "Check you out!"

"I do believe spending time with you today has done wonders for my comedic timing."

"Is that your way of saying I'm funny?"

"That's my way of saying _I'm _funny."

They sat on the couch side-by-side, hand-in-hand. Penny wasn't sure at what point she started to feel weird about the whole thing. And not weird. There she was. Holding hands with _Sheldon Cooper_, curled up in a little ball at his side, watching The Lion King on her laptop. She looked at their hands for the first time in a long time. She had never noticed how large his hands were, how nimble his fingers. They were kind of pretty, all prominent knuckles and profuse veins.

Penny noticed that Sheldon noticed that she was noticing their hands so she said, "Can we switch?"

He held her right hand, which was worse. Now they had to lean in toward one another since Sheldon refused to vacate his spot.

Though, her cheek did fit nicely on his shoulder.

ooo

Sheldon gave up at midnight. "Penny, I need to sleep. You can sit up and wait for Leonard as long as you want."

"You wuss."

"Sleep deprivation is serious business, Penny."

They went across the hall to gather Sheldon's robe, slippers, and pillow. He changed, but only after she helped him tie one of his longer sleeved t-shirts over her eyes. Then he brushed his teeth.

Penny wiped his mouth with a rag as ordered, still blindfolded.

Sheldon reluctantly used the bathroom. Penny listened to Ben Webster. Blindfolded.

Sheldon had never shared a bed with another person in his life so he was hesitant to share a bed with Penny. He considered sleeping in the floor, but dismissed that notion almost immediately. He was tired from being on his feet all day. His legs hurt from wearing improper shoes at the Cheesecake Factory. He smelled terrible. Still, he would not deviate from his routine. Showers were early in the morning. Not late at night. Penny conceded that while she showered twice a day when she worked a shift, she would wait until tomorrow, too.

The mishap from that morning was still fresh in Sheldon's mind.

Sheldon set his cell-phone for 6:00 AM. "Penny. When was the last time you washed your sheets?"

"Think of this like a hotdog. The less you know the ingredients, the better."

Sheldon slept fully robed despite the heat.

They rested beside each other, stiff and staring at the ceiling.

"Penny?"

"Hm?"

"Although I look forward to having my hands to myself--"

Penny snorted.

"--today was not a totally unpleasant experience."

She smiled at him.

ooo

Penny opened her eyes. _Oh, shit,_ she thought. _I fell asleep!_ (She sure as Hell wasn't going to tell Sheldon they slept with the door to her apartment standing wide open.) Penny noticed that the lights were on and she threw her free arm into the air triumphantly. Sheldon was still asleep, which meant it was the crack of dawn. Penny wondered what stirred her awake when she heard a loud _BANG_ coming from the hallway.

"Oh, my God." Leonard's voice. "That layover was terrible."

"Just in time for you to go to work, dude."

"I'm not going to work. I'm calling in si--why is Penny's door open?"

Penny moved to rub the sleepies out of her eyes with her right hand. It smacked her in the face. She hadn't expected lifting Sheldon's dead weight would be so easy…

Penny blinked at her hands. Both of them.

They were unstuck.

"_WHOO-HOOOO!"_ Penny jumped to her feet.

Sheldon jerked awake. "Danger! Danger!"

Penny flapped her arms, planting her feet on either side of his legs. "Look!"

"I'm free?" It didn't take him long to venture, "I think I perspired us apart."

Because, yeah, who wouldn't sweat buckets in ninety degree weather wearing a robe to bed? They had washed their hands so many times while they were waiting tables Penny guessed Sheldon's hypothesis was possible. She went with fate, however, reasoning she needed a day with Sheldon to forget her petty problems.

"_What…?"_ Leonard stood in the doorway of Penny's bedroom.

Howard and Raj pulled up the rear, slack-jawed.

Penny kept dancing. Sheldon grabbed her by her hips to push her back, but she would have none of that. She shook him off, plopped to her knees hugged his face against her breasts, swaying back and forth, _EEE_ing at the top of her lungs.

Howard pulled out his cell-phone to take a video.

"Well," Sheldon said, clearing his throat while Penny gripped handfuls of his hair. "When you were gone, Penny let herself in to our apartment half naked in search for coffee. I had an accident. Penny and I spent the day with one another. I took her on a date. Then we slept together. And here we are."

Leonard blew a gasket.

ooo

Two days later, Penny bumped into Sheldon on her way to collect her mail.

"Raj is taking me to the comic book store because Leonard still isn't talking to me."

They descended the stairs. Somewhere between the fourth floor and the ground floor, they started holding hands. The weird part was neither of them noticed until Penny made for the mailboxes and Sheldon made for the curb.

Penny stumbled. She turned around and followed the line of their outstretched arms until she looked Sheldon in his face.

"Fascinating." He missed a beat. "Would you like to go to the comic book store with me?"

"Why not?"

They walked hand-in-hand into the Pasadena sunshine.

Raj wet his pants.

The End


End file.
